


Psychopomp

by supergirrl



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: Gen, Ghosts, Psychopomps, The Valkyrie (Mad Max) Lives
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-15
Updated: 2017-05-15
Packaged: 2018-11-01 01:04:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,176
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10911132
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/supergirrl/pseuds/supergirrl
Summary: As a psychopomp, Valkyrie has helped hundreds of lost souls on their way to the afterlife, but she's never met one quite like Angharad.





	Psychopomp

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Owlship](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Owlship/gifts).



> Hello everyone! This fic is for Owlship's request for a fic where Valkyrie and Angharad meet and have ideological arguments.

Valkyrie came into the world veiled, her tiny face swathed in tissue. Even as the Mothers peeled it from her face, they were already discussing what it would mean for her. Mel was certain that she would defend their harvests against the encroaching blight of the Wasteland, while Mary thought she would be lucky in all aspects of life. All agreed, however, that she was special, a child set apart from the moment of her birth.    

And although the crops still failed and luck was in short supply, they were still proven right when Valkyrie began to speak to the dead.  

Old or young, male or female or neither, warrior or pacifist-it didn’t matter what they had been in life. From the time of her earliest memories, the dead came to her, to tell their stories and be heard.

To her, there was nothing strange or frightening about ghosts; they were people, just like anyone else. She grew up alongside them, learning from the deceased elders of their tribe and playing with the souls of the lost Vuvalini children. Sometimes they seemed so much like the living that it was difficult for her to tell that they were dead, but others were little more than a presence that flickered at the edges of her consciousness. The dead were a part of her, and Valkyrie embraced them wholeheartedly. Time taught Valkyrie that the souls who visited her remained in the living world for a reason. She recognized, on some deep instinctual level, that her role was to listen and help them on their way, to-well, Valkyrie wasn’t certain where exactly they went. She hoped it was somewhere peaceful, somewhere green.

Yet as time passed, she saw fewer and fewer ghosts. The Vuvalini dead no longer lingered in the living world, instead passing on immediately after death. Her interactions with outsiders dwindled, so she no longer encountered foreign souls. It had been so long that, when she finally came across a ghost, she almost didn’t notice.

 

At first she had been too engrossed in her reunion with Furiosa to pay more than cursory attention to her companions. When they climbed down onto the sand, she looked at them more closely, and realized that of the seven who rode with her sister, only six were still living. Four young women wrapped in white cloth and clinging to one another, a sickly man-a boy, really, under his white paint and fearsome scars-, a grizzled man who bore the marks of a wanderer, and-

A spirit, straggling behind the others. She was limping and hunched over, seemingly unable to stand up straight, with an arm wrapped around her abdomen, as if she was trying to hold her organs in. Sometimes, if a person died violently, the trauma was so great that their souls would continue to feel that pain even after death. Judging by her labored steps and the sheer rage radiating from her, Valkyrie suspected that this particular ghost had been torn reluctantly from life, fighting death every step of the way.

 

Valkyrie was engrossed in tinkering with her bike’s engine when she sensed Angharad’s familiar presence. Since Joe’s defeat, she was typically following her sisters or Furiosa around the Citadel, but she also spent a fair amount of time with Valkyrie. She was the one who had taken Valkyrie into the Vault, and showed her the defiant words they had scrawled on the walls of their former prison. They may not have agreed on everything-Angharad had strong opinions that she did not hesitate to share-but Valkyrie admired her convictions and the strength of her beliefs.

Angharad asked, “‘One man, one bullet.’ I heard you telling Toast that earlier. What does it mean?”

Valkyrie looked at Angharad, trying to read her expression. With time, the wounds to Angharad’s soul had healed. Her broken limbs straightened, her leg no longer bled, the monstrous gash across her body closed, and the scars faded from her face and arm. But despite the scores of days since her death, she had shown no inclination to move on. As she had gotten to know her, that hadn’t surprised Valkyrie; in all her life she had never encountered a spirit with as much sadness and rage as Angharad.

“Tell me what you think it means.” This was how she and Furiosa had learned as children, through a series of questions and answers. As the lastborn child of the Vuvalini, Valkyrie had not thought she would ever be able to play the role of teacher to those younger than herself. But life in the Citadel was nothing if not full of surprises.

Angharad thought for a moment. “Ammunition is finite, so you want to be as efficient as possible by causing the most death with the fewest bullets.”

Valkyrie heard the note of scorn in her voice and sighed. Angharad was intelligent but stubborn, seeing the world as a place of clearly defined right and wrong, with no acknowledgement of the gray areas of morality.

“That’s true, but it’s not all. When Vuvalini kill, it’s for protection, not for the thrill of murder. We do not glorify the suffering or death of our enemies, and so when we must kill, we do it as quickly and painlessly as possible. A bullet to the head for every man: enough to get it done without wasting ammunition or causing unnecessary pain. Not all killing is the same, Angharad.”

Angharad’s gaze drifted to a crowd of War Boys, both living and dead, that lingered nearby. “They certainly wouldn’t agree with you.”

“Do you ever talk to any of them?” Valkyrie asked, gesturing towards a pair of dead War Boys. One was so corporeal that he could almost be mistaken for alive, while the other had faded and was little more than a smudge in the corner of her vision.

Angharad scoffed. “What could I possibly have to talk about with War Boys?””

“They aren’t all bad. What about Nux? He adores Capable.” Valkyrie liked the lanky, awkward ex-War Boy. He did talk an awful lot, but he was a good man, and more than a passing good driver.

Angharad’s face softened, as it always did when her sisters were mentioned. “She’s easy to love.”

Angharad’s love was like her: brilliant, hard, and unforgiving. She loved her sisters and Furiosa deeply, yet was so consumed by fear for them that it turned that love into something sharp and painful. It had given her strength but also cut her deep inside. And Valkyrie didn’t think that spending her afterlife trailing after her loved ones was what Angharad needed. She needed to let herself take steps towards moving on by fulfilling whatever it was that held her here.

“Try it, you might be surprised.” In Valkyrie’s experience, the boundaries that divided the living were blurred by the shared experience of death, and she thought that Angharad might have more in common with dead War Boys than she imagined. “You could share your words with them, help them understand that they are not things.”

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you all for reading, and I hope you enjoyed it!


End file.
